Sat, Nov 02, 2013

What's the point of having a President who learns about everything his administration is doing from the newspapers, just like everyone else? When do you start to ask, "Is this guy stupid or just dishonest?"

From day one, the health policy community has correctly seen the Affordable Care Act as an attempt to completely change the health care system. This isn't even controversial. It's accepted by all as an undisputed fact.

It was irresistible. On Halloween, The Drudge Report highlighted a Washington Post interview with the author of "The Exorcist." William Peter Blatty had used the word "demonic," and now there atop Drudge was a photo of Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

So how much more is your health insurance going to cost you? That’s the question, really, as Obamacare begins taking effect and the stories pour in from around the country: how much your premiums are going up, not if they are.

In all fairness, Obama probably would have said anything the teleprompter told him to. Still, it’s been wild watching Liberals try to justify the President’s promise that people could keep their current insurance. Idiots like Ezra Klein are beginning to meltdown over the incompetence of the White House. (Not to mention the dishonesty.)

Fri, Nov 01, 2013

Cincinnati and Detroit are separated by barely more than 250 miles – a five-hour drive at worst, or under an hour by plane. Despite this proximity, many Cincinnatians would prefer to believe that Detroit’s horrendous fiscal situation couldn’t possibly hit their city. Not so fast.

“Mr President the American people are asking with new urgency: what is going on in Cuba?” On August 31st 1962 Senator Kenneth Keating (Republican, New York) was on the Senate floor prompted by reports of a huge and rapid deployment of Soviet troops and sophisticated arms to Cuba.

While her husband's signature health care law goes up in flames, first lady Michelle Obama is reveling in the success of her East Wing pet project, the "Let's Move" initiative. But ignore the do-gooder dressing.

I close my eyes and imagine the coming days. The American public
growing skeptical and then outright dismissive of Obamacare. A growing
revulsion over the administration's Benghazi deception. A national
awakening to the crises we face in spending, especially on entitlements.

Where are Americans moving, and why? Timothy Noah, writing in the Washington Monthly, professes to be puzzled. He points out that people have been moving out of states with high per capita incomes -- Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, Maryland -- to states with lower income levels.

Often in error but never in doubt, Barack Obama could walk into the Rose
Garden and step on a half-dozen rakes like Foghorn Leghorn in an old
Looney Tunes cartoon, and the official line would be, "He meant to do
that."

I just don't understand it. Everywhere we turn, we conservatives are told we need to moderate, be less extreme, be more bipartisan. The public just wants us all to get along and solve our major problems together.

This administration is masterful at making sure they have the punitive measures all set to go to cover for the fact that they can’t govern. Only in Washington DC and only amongst Democrats would this be applauded as success.

When New York City's strikingly successful police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, arrived to address students at Brown University, he was harassed, booed and heckled for 30 long minutes. "Racism is not for debate," they shouted.

Three decades ago, Woody Allen made a movie called "Zelig," and Zelig is still among us -- popping up in Hollywood, politics, academia and anywhere where ambition is on the make. Zelig is a human chameleon, a liar and an imposter eager to fit in anywhere opportunity knocks.

The White House welcome of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki this week couldn't come at a more awkward time for President Obama, whose fecklessness in foreign affairs will be his most enduring legacy.

I am not cheering as I write this column. The Presidency of Barack Obama is spiraling downward largely because of Obamacare and it is not clear to me that Mr. Obama can avoid a Presidential face plant.

I received a call this week from representatives of the D.C. Health Benefit Exchange in response to my article published by Townhall.com in which I outlined my journey to discover which plans under the D.C. health exchange exclude elective abortion coverage.

Pro- and anti-Brotherhood students clashed at Azhar University in Cairo, prompting the university president to invite the police to restore order. At the al-Azhar university's main campus, students smashed windows, hurled chairs and covered walls of an administrative building with graffiti.

Katie Pavlich and Michael Schaus discuss the absurdity of the liberal Obamacare-Defense. As Kathleen Sebelius continues to defend the law on Capitol Hill, the White House is suggesting people are losing their coverage because of the evil-private sector. . . I think we know how this debate is going to devolve.

Indeed, when it comes to sports trivia, the president is certainly a well-informed authority. But when it comes to world events, economics, and providing much needed leadership as he attempts to run this country, Obama is totally clueless.

“Unbelievable. A new low. I’m so ashamed.” So remarked Boon to his girlfriend Katie in the movie “Animal House,” offering a fake apology for another raucous fraternity party just before Delta House’s downfall at the hands of Dean Wormer.

Warren Buffett loves to invest in stable businesses with few competitors. One of his recent favorites is DaVita HealthCare (NYSE: DVA), which operates a network of dialysis treatment centers in the United States catering to patients that have diabetes-induced kidney failure. But DaVita has a big problem on its hands.

The Common Core Standards that now dictate the so-called “standards” and therefore the testing and therefore the curriculum (despite claims to the contrary) of forty-five state school systems in the land have dressed themselves up nicely.

The chattering classes, overrun with Red Sox fans, are waking up to a scary thought: the realization that now they have only the Celtics to cheer hem through an increasingly gloomy time for their favoritist president ever.

It's vitally important that young Americans learn American history. Our country’s strength has always come from being a “great melting pot,” a nation open to people from all over the world who want to become American.

Over the last few weeks, a tremendous amount of my time has been focused on a critical issue that is bringing major division to many evangelical Christians in America which leads me to ask myself, “If we, as a sub-group within a sub-group, can’t even work together, how can we possibly influence the larger world around us?”

President Obama loves to golf. President Obama loves to campaign. President Obama loves to hobnob with celebrities. In fact, President Obama loves all the trappings of the presidency except, it would seem, actually doing the job of being President.

When the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan is completed next
year what will happen to Afghan women? Will a resurgent Taliban return
them to wearing burqas, withdraw them from schools and force them to live
behind painted glass in their homes, permitting them to leave the house
only when accompanied by a blood relative?

Three weeks after the opening of our government, I finally realized why there is so much hatred for Senator Ted Cruz and company: Jealousy. Cruz’s words and actions served as the political equivalent of Dramamine by freeing Americans from the motion sickness that comes from Washington, DC’s normal spin cycle.

Apparently, President Barack Obama was fibbing when he said in 2009 that under his Affordable Care Act, "if you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period." On Wednesday, Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler rated that pledge as a four-Pinocchio whopper.

With the current debacle of the Obamacare "failure to launch" in full swing, it may well be that Democrats have little, if any, prayer of keeping their control of the U.S. Senate after the 2014 elections.

In 1996, as California voters considered whether to make theirs the first state to legalize the use of marijuana for medical purposes, they were warned that they were on the verge of creating a grim wasteland from which they might never escape.

The historic blunders of President Barack Obama's embarrassing health care rollout demonstrate spectacularly the utter failure of what? Let me tell you. They are the blunders of what was once called the "Brightest Generation" in American history, the 1960s generation.

There was a story last week that got my attention. Lech Walesa, former president of Poland and a great hero in my book (but not on this point), said that what we need today is a “secular Ten Commandments.”

As a staffer to an Illinois Democrat Congressman who voted for ObamaCare, Sue Klinkhamer "had constituents scream at me, spit at me and call me names that I can't put in print." Now, because of the provisions of ObamaCare, her insurance premium will more than double. And she's not loving it. . .

One major provision being considered in Egypt is a stricter separation of powers among the presidency, legislature and judiciary so as to limit executive power relative to the other branches of government.

Imagine that it was Sept. 12, 2001, and you opened your newspaper, gazed in horror at the many photos of unspeakable carnage at the Twin Towers, and found this story: “The American Civil Liberties Union today urged the Justice Department to probe the surveillance of Muslim Americans by the New York City Police Department.”

While Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, is not taking responsibility for the web debacle and, of course, the President refuses to take any of the blame for any of his fiascoes, the White House has found a fall girl, the website lady.

The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is visiting the White House this week. Doubtless, the President has many pressing issues to raise with him, among them Baghdad’s acquiescence to Iranian over-flights, carrying weapons and Revolutionary Guards to prop up Syria’s dictator Bashar Assad, and his increasingly sectarian marginalization of the Sunni minority in Iraq.

More of Obama’s campaign rhetoric has turned out to be nothing more than dishonest sales pitches. Michael Robinson, Chief Technology Strategist for Money Map Press, also joined the program to discuss the endless possibilities of the tech sector.

In my new book, You Were Born for More, I give spiritual principles that will help any believer to have courage in an overwhelmingly negative environment and it will help them take a confident personal stand when persecution, mean-spiritedness and ridicule come their way.

Obamacare’s glitches are here to stay according to House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan. In an exclusive interview with CNBC’s Larry Kudlow, Ryan said the problems with the Affordable Care Act extend far beyond website malfunctions.

Another woman being interviewed by NBC asked, rightfully, what she’s supposed to eat now that her insurance premium is as large as her rental payment. (Cake?) Over 1.5 million Americans have received similar letters in recent weeks, with up to 14 million more Americans potentially on the healthcare chopping block.

The public's opinion of politicians of both parties seems to have reached a new low. But no matter how much the voters detest Congress -- or how justifiably -- that does not mean that there will be radical changes at the next election.

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius is allergic to the truth. She is the ruthless enforcer of Obamacare's Jenga tower of lies upon lies upon lies. Now that this fatally flawed government edifice is collapsing, you can expect Sebelius to do what she has done her entire career: blame, bully and pile on more lies.

I've always avoided reporting on the Federal Reserve. I know it's more important than much of the stuff I cover, but it's so boring. How can I succeed on TV reporting on the Fed? Fed chairs even work at being dull.

According to a recent Fox News poll, 73 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with the direction of the country, up 20 points from 2012. Americans sense that there's a lot going wrong in our nation, but most don't have a clue about the true nature of our problem.

There may be no more misleading newspaper sentence in the Virginia governor's race than this one from reporter Carol Morello in the Oct. 26 Washington Post: "The two major-party candidates running for governor in Virginia are both practicing Catholics."

"All we've been hearing the last three years is if you like your policy
you can keep it. ... I'm infuriated because I was lied to," one woman told
the Los Angeles Times, as part of a story on how some middle-class
Californians have been stunned to learn the real costs of Obamacare.

If there is one man who knows about corrupt presidential administrations, it is Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward. So, when the man who helped bring down Richard Nixon warns about widespread corruption within the Executive Branch, it commands attention.

So-called "transparency advocates" who believe that splaying out
all the intelligence activities of America and its allies will result in
increased oversight, regulation and accountability have failed to learn
the recent lesson of warfare: Whining about what you can't handle just
leads to more secrecy. That's how we ended up with drones.

Having a child who struggles in school torments parents – whether it’s because of attention deficit disorder, dyslexia, an inability to comprehend “whole word” approaches in learning to read, or just a need to “learn differently” from peers. The experience is even harder on the child.

Last Friday, the Justice Department acknowledged for the first time that it is using evidence derived from warrantless wiretapping to prosecute someone. That development sets the stage for a Fourth Amendment challenge to a law that gives the National Security Agency amazingly broad discretion to eavesdrop on Americans' phone calls and read their email.

Not every bad thing that happens to us is bad, long term. I've learned it well; some of life's biggest blessings arrive unexpectedly, wrapped in the most unsightly dressings. It's as if the alchemy happens in the waiting. And so it may be for the GOP, as they now get to witness certain Democrats, who supported Obamacare, paying a hefty price for their misdeeds.

When you allow ideology to drive the development of policy with no attention to reality or practicality, the results are catastrophic. For the President and his supporters, Obamacare was conceived not as a policy solution for America's growing healthcare challenges but as a symbol of the President's progressive worldview.

After years of ridicule, and name calling, NBC finally figured it out: Maybe the President wasn’t actually telling the truth when he said we could keep our current insurance. Michael Cannon, from Cato, joined the program to discuss the millions of Americans who are being dumped from their coverage in the wake of Obamacare.

Before the Affordable Care Act (ACA) became law, many pro-life leaders and others with moral objections to having elective abortion covered in their health care plans were concerned that they would be forced into purchasing health plans that cover abortion. It turns out their concerns were well-founded.

Post-shutdown, I'm still mulling two things: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid doesn't seem to know what the House of Representatives is supposed to do, and President Obama doesn't seem to know the way "checks and balances" are supposed to work.

Audrey Hudson’s husband had just left for work on August 6 when suddenly, her dog began barking. The nationally-known journalist walked over to the curtains and peeked outside to discover her Chesapeake Bay home was surrounded by law enforcement officers wearing full body armor.

The FBI reports on its website that "not only is human sex trafficking slavery but it is big business. It is the fastest-growing business of organized crime and the third-largest criminal enterprise in the world."

Two snares stand in the way of conservatives' fervent desire to dismantle Obamacare: 1) a possible perception that its problems are limited to the technical issues with the rollout and 2) the GOP's potentially suicidal impulse to bail Obama out.

The spectacularly dreadful debut of Obamacare represents the greatest political opportunity for conservatism and the Republican Party in two generations. Big government stands rebuked. It has overreached, overpromised, and, embarrassingly, failed to deliver.

"Bye Bye Birdie" is an old musical that survives in high school
productions and in some people's memory bank. It debuted on Broadway in
1960 and was made into a film in 1963. One of the songs from the show
might serve as an inspiration, if not a theme, for Republicans in the
winter of their discontent over President Obama and congressional
Democrats: "Put on a Happy Face."

The first reports in early May of 1960 were that a U.S. weather plane, flying out of Turkey, had gone missing. A silent Moscow knew better. After letting the Americans crawl out on a limb, expatiating on their cover story, Russia sawed it off.

Is there an idiom in Arabic for cutting off your nose to spite your face? Saudi Arabia's abrupt rejection on October 18 of the UN Security Council seat to which it had just been elected was described as "bizarre" and "baffling."

When opinion shifts in modern America, the change can be like a flash flood. Three years ago, 54 percent of California voters rejected Proposition 19, which would have legalized the recreational use of marijuana.

Cardinals Meet Red Sox in World Series. It was headline news in 1946, too.
Which wasn't the only similarity between now and then. Because it was the
best of times, the worst of times, like a lot of other years in always
bubbling and simmering and broiling history, especially the American kind.

Republicans and conservatives recognize that the principal reason for our unique abundance is our constitutional restraints on the power of government, separation of powers, balanced budgets, and a minimum of government supervision and interference in our daily lives.

'Tis the season for zombies, ghouls and ghosts, our little ones swaddled as oversized pumpkins and our adolescents as chilling horrors. Soon, all that gothic shuffling and calls for candy through mummy-wrapped mouths will come to a close for most of America.

More inflation. I can't wait. What we seem to need, on the reckoning of various "progressives," as well as some corporate types, is -- I infer -- more sustained effort by the Federal Reserve to print money.

When it comes to negotiations involving the so-called federal regulators (U.S. Justice Department) and the big-money-center-too-big-to-fail-national-institutions better known as banks, it seems that it really isn’t rocket science.

According to the Left, it is either Rand Paul, or Ted Cruz. And while Ted Cruz continues to fight against Obamacare, Rand Paul is ramping up to fight for transparency in the Fed. . . Now, just wait for the insults to fly from the Janet Yellen advocates on the left.

Ferguson succeeds in methodically humiliating New York Times columnist, celebrity blogger, and Nobel economic prize laureate Paul Krugman, together with his “gaggle of bloggers who are to Krugman what Egyptian plovers are to crocodiles.”

Mon, Oct 28, 2013

While chemical weapons disarmament proceeds in Syria, so do mass attacks on civilians. In the eastern suburbs of Damascus, where the regime used sarin, it now conducts a siege, blocking the entrance of food and the exit of refugees.

Under Obamacare, the Internal Revenue Service will determine who is eligible for health insurance subsidies, and it will deliver those subsidies, in the form of tax credits, to millions of individual Americans.

When Senator Barack Obama became President-elect Barack Obama, then President Barack Obama there was not-so-secret high-fiving in newsrooms and editorial offices world-wide that after eight years of plundering and bumbling by that cowboy George W. Bush, finally America's foreign policy would be led by a sophisticated internationalist sitting in the White House.

Environmentalists have galvanized behind a movement to resurrect wolf populations in rural America. Public support, particularly from urban regions, appears to favor the idea of returning this iconic symbol of the wilderness to America’s rural landscapes.

Soldiers attending a pre-deployment briefing at Fort Hood say they were told that evangelical Christians and members of the Tea Party were a threat to the nation and that any soldier donating to those groups would be subjected to punishment under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

The establishment has declared us defeated, but we’re ready to fight like rabid wolverines. Now we need to think carefully about how we defeat our opponents over the long haul. And “the long haul” means many election cycles.

The average college graduate holds at least $35,200 of debt and has spent four years out of the workforce, where he or she would be otherwise gaining experience. All this for a piece of paper that by no means guarantees a job.

For the first time in our history ordinary citizens have the ability to communicate with one another over the heads of the media in publications like Townhall. We are networked on social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter that expose us to thousands of people for free.

Only now does Obamacare's namesake call the press to the Rose Garden, which is much better tended than his signature program, to acknowledge what everybody already knows: There are, well, a few problems with his signature program.

If it is a big mistake and everyone makes big mistakes, before making a public comment, the first step is always to make a complete assessment of the problem. That assessment has to determine both the why, the solution and the time required to achieve a solution.

CATO’S 31ST ANNUAL MONETARY CONFERENCE — WAS THE FED A GOOD IDEA? — will bring together some of the world’s leading scholars and policymakers to consider the record of the Federal Reserve since its establishment in December 1913.

This past Monday as math teacher Mike Landsberry lay shot and dying on a playground’s basketball court in Sparks, Nevada, America’s public education system on the East Coast was already at work subjecting more children to the perils of another lethal threat: political correctness. Make no mistake about it -- political correctness is the impetus of gun-free zones. It is also destroying the minds of America’s children while leaving them physically vulnerable.

Natural disasters illustrate the industry’s ability to manage and absorb large losses. The losses from hurricanes Katrina and Andrew, and the Northridge earthquake, were all comparable to the losses from 9/11, so there is nothing particularly special about the level of terror damage.

Common Core teaching materials instruct teachers to explain that land owners are evil, and that business owners are inherently greedy. In addition to reading a glowing biography of a Marxist labor leader, second-grade students will be asked to evaluate the scales of fairness between wealthy landowners, and lowly [non-union] workers.

When I wrote last week that Democrats eventually would come to Congress seeking to “fix” the mess that is Obamacare I never thought “eventually” would be a week later, but that’s where we find ourselves.

The government was shut down and we had spent up to the limit of what we could legally borrow. But the country was not focused on the fact that our new health care law was beginning as a dismal failure. Or that our tax collectors are running rampant with no promised Presidential butt-kicking.Record numbers of people are on food stamps, even as our economy has supposedly grown for four years and the employment rate has supposedly shrunk.None of these constitute the second most important issue in America.That would be the name of Washington D.C.’s professional football team.

>In the course of their duties, Chicago police come into possession of all sorts of contraband: jewelry, video games, bicycles, cars. They sell the stuff through online auctions that are open to the public.

Next will be the realization that time is running out to sign up and they will have to pay a penalty. They will be penalized for not signing up on a website or telephone number that doesn’t allow them to sign up.

Previously, I talked about the Sojourners-sponsored ad headlined "What Would Jesus Cut?" The ad, signed by Jim Wallis and more than two dozen leaders of the Religious Left, urged our leaders to ask themselves what Jesus would cut from the federal budget.

Barack Obama put on his statesman’s hat as he strode into the East Room of the White House last week to implore House Republicans to enact amnesty for millions of illegal aliens and massively increase the flow of new immigrants and guest workers into the United States.

Shareholders receiving mail, phone calls, and front-porch visits from the Caterpillar employees’ union would be unwelcome and downright creepy. But that is the methodology of teachers unions in the K-12 world.